


A Hundred Year Slumber

by Star_Nymph



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Asperger Inquisitor, Asperger Syndrome, Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-03 22:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Nymph/pseuds/Star_Nymph
Summary: Eurydice had been asleep and she had no intention of ever waking up. Let the world keep its confusion, its chaos. She had no interest in any of it--until Haven. Until Cullen. Now this girl whose slept a hundred years has found something to wake up for.





	1. Awake

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh, it took me forever to work up the nerve to write this story. I hope you all enjoy it for what it is and the mistakes I made aren't that bad. I don't have Asperger's Syndrome but I did my research best I can, so I hope I got it right. If I didn't and I accidentally insult someone, I'm sorry as that was far from my intention. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy Eurydice and Cullen's story. If you have any comments or helpful tips please feel free to write something. I'll definitely appreciate the feedback! Thank you for reading!

She awakens and feels the shift in her. A Change. Something new.

Gingerly, Eurydice lifted her hand up to the ceiling and watched with vague interest as it oozed with magic. It hugged her wrist, slid over her palm, circled her fingers like wisps of air. Cold surges laced her skin and ran through to her veins, chilling her blood. She squeezed her hand into a fist and it sparkled, then popped, protesting how she covered the wound it flowed out of.

Not her normal magic.

Hm. Odd.

She straightened her fingers and tried to produce a flare of electrical current. What came out instead was an angered flash of brilliant emerald that roared in her ears. It reached all the way up the ceiling, crawling along the walls until she flexed her fingers and forced it all back down into the mark.

Definitely not her normal magic.

Rotating her hand from back to palm, Eurydice shifted her body and felt the feather mattress beneath--a peculiar thing to feel when you were so used to resting on animal pelts and the flatness of the ground so long. It gave her some pause, enough that she sat up slowly and realized that she wasn’t in her aravel or anywhere even remotely familiar.

Walls of woods. Desks flooded with papers. Animals skins on walls. Chests and barrels. Fireplace. Carpet on the floor that wasn’t for sleep.

She looked and touched the mattress, then slid her hand down to the hard frame underneath. It was a shem’s bed. What was she doing in a shem’s bed?

Eurydice touched her head and closed her eyes, pushing her hand into her hair only to notice that as her fingers cascaded down there was nothing past her neck. Hair. Gone. _HAIR. GONE._ She went stiff and canvassed the room frantically.

Wait. She needed to think. She breathed in sharply through her nose and gripped the strands of hair she still had.

She had...cut her hair when she left the clan. Left because the Keeper asked her to; watch the shems’ war--watch this _‘Conclave’-_ -and report back. Don’t be seen. She cut her hair for her youngest sister--for her Aegle--because the little one was scared that shems would grab it. Gave her sliced braid to her and left.

Left and traveled. Over sea. Didn’t like sea. Over farmland. Through forests. Came to snow covered land—to a big temple— _Temple of Ashes_ —the shems marched to and infested and she went inside when no one looked and searched the halls aimlessly and--

The mark sparked! _Screeched_! Hissed at her in her ear to stop and Eurydice swung her left hand away from her.

She remembered a blast of sickly magic that stabbed her between the eyes and being yanked by chains and by metal hands to follow, look at the cut in the sky, close the _rift_ , seal the--seal the--

“-- _Breach_.” She croaked out. Her flat voice was engulfed by the thud of a heavy box and the shrill cry of a young girl.

“I-I didn’t know you were awake, I swear!”

Eurydice grunted, her ears twitching as she clapped her right hand over one of them. Too loud. She pulled her eyes off the temperamental mark on her hand and looked briefly at the girl. Elven. Pretty dark hair, short and pulled out of her face. She was stepping back and Eurydice didn’t know why.

She got up from the bed wordlessly and the girl collapsed onto her knees as if her soul had flown out of her. “Beg your forgiveness and your blessing. I am but a humble servant!” She exclaimed and nearly smacked her head off the floor in what Eurydice could guess was...excitement? “You are back in Haven, My Lady. T-they save you saved us! The Breach stopped glowing just like the mark on your hand.” The girl’s eyes flickered to Eurydice’s left hand which flared briefly, startling her and forcing her head back down again with a pitched _‘eep’_. “I-It’s all anyone’s talked about for the last three days!”

 _Three days_ is the only part Eurydice cared to hang onto. She slept but she did not remember wandering the Fade as she usually did or anything else for that matter. Was this mark sealing her off from even that?

She brought her hand up to her face and narrowed her eyes at the line drawn across her palm. What else would this do to her without her permission? She had the sudden desire to force the wound wider open, reach into it, and drag out what was really inside her. As if it were that simple.

“T-t-there is something still in the sky, b-but they say it’s over…” The elf girl went on, head still bowed. The girl was providing nothing in the way of answers and her groveling made the elf fidget from side to side.

Seeing the door just beyond the girl, Eurydice walked past her with hardly any more acknowledgment. The entire room was beginning to choke her. She heard the girl stumble after her, maybe still on her knees, and say, “L-Lady Cassandra will want to know you’ve awaken. At once, she said!”

 _Cassandra_. The Seeker. Rigid scar down the cheek. A face carved severely like a statue from stone. Glaring into her. Demanding her help.

She remembered her all at once vividly. She didn’t want to see her again, less she be dragged around into something else.

The wood was creaking behind her; the girl was getting up. “I will--”

“There is no need.” Eurydice responded evenly, dismissing anything the girl might do by opening the door and stepping out. The frosty wind seized her instantly, but not quite so as the sun blazing down on her. Or, was it?

Something was pouring unto her from above, calling to her like light did in the Fade.

Eurydice looked up at the sky and there, standing out in the icy blue sky and the clouds, was a scar of intense green.  

 _Breach_. She thought and the mark flashed to life.

So it wasn’t closed. All that work climbing up the mountain and she had failed to close it? She noted that there wasn’t anything dangling out from it now--no demons chasing them down. Compared to how it was before, the world had become calm...well, as calm as it would ever be, she mused. Eurydice lifted her hand to the sky as if she could have grasped the scar and tried to pinch it closed, but nothing came of it. She dropped her hand. No more would she linger here, this ‘Haven’ or what have you. Being among the shems had already proven to be a mistake. They were more of a bothersome folk than she had first thought.

It was as she thought that, that she noticed she was not alone. Down the short set of stairs, a crowd, parted down the middle to each side of the path, had formed and held its breath. Dozens of people--shems, elf dwarf--were staring at her, some bent on knee like the elven girl, others clamored together as they whispered back and forth into each other’s ear.

“That’s _her_...That’s the _Herald_.”

“An elf? Andraste saved an _elf_?”

“Don’t you see the mark? She closed the Breach with that.”

“ _Almost_ , you mean…”

“The Herald of Andraste...I can’t believe…”

Eurydice wavered and moved back as a deer would do when caught by a hunter and their arrow. Her wild, clumsy feet struggled to find balance, her brain ordering her to run from these people and their intrusive expressions.

Why were they _staring_ at her?

What did they _see_?

What was that thing they were calling her? A Herald? Creators, when had they named her that? Days ago, they had been condemning her—parading her about in shackles over the death of their precious ‘Divine’—and now they were on their knees, praying in the way one prays to a God.

Eurydice couldn’t breathe. The pregnant silence tangled around her neck and squeezed the air out of her.

Avoiding eye contact with the lot, the elf searched around for a way out and noticed a wooden gate. Large, imposing; what other way would shems mark their entrances? Limbs stiff and eyes forward, she walked down the stairs and through the crowd, her sight and mind focused solely on the gates. The people were saying words—to themselves, to her, to their deity, she didn’t know—but she wasn’t listening. With both hands, she shoved the gates wide open with its hatches groaning noisily.

The first thing she saw were the mountains beyond the frozen like and that, for some reason, brought her comfort.

She could walk to a mountain, make home in the cave, and stay there until everything blew over. It was a plan. Instinctively, she reached for her staff to help her begin the journey but her back held nothing.

Oh, the shems must have taken it—terrible, she made that staff herself—she _could_ go back inside and look for it but then.

The eyes were still on her, digging deep and trying to find something that wasn’t there.

No. She could do without a staff; find a sturdy enough stick and something to focus on and that would work well enough.

Looking from right to left, the elf decided that though she had no clue where to go, she would follow the gravel road down by the stables. As she did, however, she did not hear the heavy thud of boots running up behind her.

“You there! Stop _now_!”

The elf does. If only because the voice berating her sounded vaguely familiar. Turning her head slightly, she peered at the shem from the corner of her eye. He was coldly glaring at her and held the hilt of his sword with one hand.

“Look here. Aware as I am of Seeker Cassandra’s claim of responsibility over you and all you’ve done to close the Breach I cannot simply let you walk out of here.”

“Why not?” Eurydice genuinely asked.

The shem seemed taken aback by the question, but shoots back. “Because you’re still a _prisoner_!”

The elf quirked one eyebrow up at him, then looked down at her hands. She rotated the both of them and showed them to the shem. “There are no chains.”

“That doesn’t--”

“I am not in the dungeon any longer.”

The shem locked his jaw in anger and grounds out, “I--”

“Therefore, I am _not_ prisoner.” She stated clearly and flatly, then she began to walk away from him, the conversation finished as far as she was concerned. It was down the road again for her, her gaze seeking the mountains and what was beyond that.

Then, the shem took hold of her wrist and yanked her back towards him, forcing her feet off balance. Teeming with annoyance and laced with threat, Eurydice felt his breath wash over her face, “Enough. I don’t enjoy your games or being made a fool. You are to go back inside and wait until Cassandra calls upon you.” He squeezed her hand tighter and forced her to meet his eye. “Is that understood?”

No, it wasn’t. Eurydice didn’t like how this shem was touching her. Something was off about his touch, despite the leather gloves that protected his hands from her skin. It made her queasy, a sensation of her skin trying to crawl off her bones. Quick flickers of pain licked along her arm, yet her face remained stoic.

“You are _hurting_ me.”

Currents of electricity flew from her fingertips and spiraled downward, enfolding around the shem’s hand and wrist like a chain. The shem’s eyes flew wide as the shock drifted through his body, up to the very top of his blonde hair, his body tremoring from the small show of magic. For a small instant, the elf was stronger than the human, holding him firmly in place and forcing him to swallow down the lightening—and then he broke free and the two of them were dashing away from each other across the snow, the blue magic bursting into a brief cloud between them.

The shem staggered awkwardly and landed on his heels with a muttered swear, holding his hand to his chest and then flinging it out to dodge the rebound magic, clenching it into a fist. Eurydice kept her spent hand outstretched, careful not to let the residual sparks hit her. The mark roared at her in its fury, seeking, demanding, and when she brought up her left hand, she saw how it was strangled with the green mist. The magic in both her hands flared, fighting for what felt like dominance over her, trying to take her over.

And the shem.

The shem was _staring_ at her. She peered at him over her fingers and saw his brown eyes, dark with something she couldn’t comprehend, but it made her want to turn and run. Get away from him; get away from this. She squeezed her hands into fists and inhaled as they dropped to her sides, trying to suck the magic back into her body.

The mark snapped at her and she felt a stabbing sensation go out through the veins in her arm. Eurydice tightened her left fist and watched as the shem started to straighten up, his hands once again on his sword.

A fight? Fine. This would not be the first shem to die at her feet. Anything to leave.

But as she readied her magic for another attack, an arrow struck the ground between them, halting them both.

“I believe we can end this here.”

Another shem. She stood at the top of the staircase with her bow drawn with second arrow. The elf recognized the accent before the face and regarded the woman with only a slight turn of the head. Red hair. Her shrouded in a hood. The grin of a fox. She was with the Seeker, her voice softer yet harsher, kinder but laced with poison. _Leliana_.

Another trying to contain her.

No. _No_. Too many. She had enough. Eurydice straightened her back and began to back away. The shems noticed her.

“Lavellan—” Leliana started and lowered her bow.

Too late; the elf spun around and fled. Down the road at first, then through the trees, stumbling over hard rock and frost on the floor. A crack rang out and she knew it to be the mark, screeching from the release of her fist, the green magic stream out of her, scratching from inside her arm, clawing under her skin, trying to dig out of her and go back to—to—to where, she did not know. The Breach, maybe.

Where would _she_ go?

Mountains.

But as she thought that, the pain of the wound flooded her mind and quaked down to her feet. Eurydice tried to keep on her legs but it was no use; she could not carry herself to the gates leading out of Haven and collapsed on her knees. The mark convulsed, discharging angered magic while it keened at her like a snake. She grabbed a hold of her wrist, trying to keep her hand still, and shut her eyes tight as she hunched over.

_Enough. Enough. Enough. Enough—_

It was fighting her. Creators, it was trying to ripe out of her. Eurydice dug her nails into her wrist until the skin broke and blood wet her fingers. Fight it. Beat it. Drag it back inside her where it belonged. Eurydice willed her fingers to work, pushing the magic back down toward the wound. The mark cried out but she ignored it.

 _Enough. Enough. Enough—_ she’d seal this thing closed with her own teeth if she had to it.

The magic began to die down; the wisps of the green vanished from the air and the licks of current that came from the edge of the cut lost their power, weakly blinking in and out of existence before finally dying out completely. The mark tried one last futile attempt to come back, but Eurydice breathed in and it had no strength left to fight.

All that linger was an ache across her entire hand. Eurydice let go of her wrist and let it fall limp by her side.

Creators, she was tired. She sat there on the ground trying to catch her breath and heard only somewhat the silent patter of footfalls coming to her side.

“It is a volatile thing, is it no? I had thought its power had declined while you slept—I was wrong, it would appear.” The voice was familiar. She recalled it quickly; the elf at the Conclave. It was a pleasant voice, soothing; she liked it.

Eurydice doesn’t look up when he bends down in front of her but when he tries to touch her, she wrenches away from him.

“Don’t!”

Solas calmly stared at her, his eyes flickering between her face and the mark. What was he looking for? “I won’t hurt you, Lavellan. I wish to inspect the mark; nothing more.” He held his hand out to her and waited.

Eurydice looked at his hand, then her own marked one, and, after deciding he was speaking the truth, let him take it. She studied the way his lips tighten as he examined the mark, not even flinching when he ran a finger over the edges of it despite feeling a tinge of pain.

“It’s calm now.” He says, “If I am correct, a few more days and you should have it under control. I’d like to study it tomorrow if you are willing.”

Tomorrow.

As in, she’d still be here tomorrow. With the shems and their _stares_.

Eurydice furrowed her brow, wide gaze on her knees, and said, “I…will not be staying. I must go.” Away. She had to go far, far away and she had to do it now.

Solas turned his eyes back to her face with an unreadable expression. “I’m afraid you might find that difficult.” She looked up through her eyelashes and saw his glance move from her to something over her shoulder and watched as his lips turned downward into a frown. “Is that not right, Seeker?”

Eurydice turned her head and there she was—tall, imposing even feet away, standing like a giant readying to snatch its prey. Cassandra scowled at Solas and made eye contact with him for a solid second, as if trying to communicate something to him, and then turned her attention back to Eurydice. “Solas is correct.” She stated with a tsk, “Come with me. We must speak.” 

The elf shook her head. She took her hand from Solas and put it in her hair, combing through it frantically. “No. I can't. I will not--” She struggled to get to her feet, her legs refusing to heed to her and work properly. Solas made no move to help nor stop her, instead watching her rigid moments with what might have been vague interest.

“You will, you—” The Seeker made a noise in the back of throat and stopped herself from going any further towards the elf, less she scares her off like the other shems. There was something stuck in her voice; a crack, a softness. Eurydice’s shoulders slumped at the sound of it. “There is no where you can go—that mark, it is killing you. It is killing you like the Breach will kill the world. And there are those in this world, regardless of what _I_ believe, that still fault you.”

Eurydice didn’t say anything, but she stopped walking. She heard the Seeker’s boots walk along the gravel road. She felt her loomed over her and in her encompassing shadow, Eurydice couldn’t find air.

“All I ask is that you listen to what I have to say. I offer this and oath of no harm. Come with me.”

She stared at the ground and felt the two sets of eyes watching her, weighing her down, pulling her apart, both watching for things, different things, she had none of. Eurydice closed her eyes and felt the ache of the mark.

“Lead me, Seeker. I will hear you.”

She should have never woken up.


	2. Unpredictable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Commander and The Herald finally actually meet each other for the first time.

The first thing he thought was that she was an animal who’s wandered too close to the camp in its curiosity. Her movements were too untamed, hazarded and graceless in her dash, the unpredictable steps of a beast which goes without thought. But she’s too fast to be an animal—too straight, too weightless, as if her nature was to act as nothing—and such swiftness made his gut twist, his blood race, his fingers grasp at his sword in panic because anything that moved that fast, that unhinged, that _erratic_ only knew harm, only knew to drink blood, only knew to cage and take and—

She halted between the trees and he caught the ill green glimmer of her marked hand. Cullen held his breath and then let out a long inhale, one that left an ache his chest and let a copper taste linger in the back of his throat.

Just the elf—Herald, Worship, Prisoner, _Lavellan_.

The name stuck inside him and crept up his spine like the legs of a spider. This was normal. The mage, Cullen realized with some hesitation, unnerved him a great deal, more than most in fact.

She hovered just beyond the edges of the tents on the small hill, shifting from right foot to left, her body hunched as she stared at his troops, though one wondered if she was really looking at them or through them—or _he_ wondered with a slight frown.

She has done this before; running from the inner walls of Haven, away from the Chantry, as soon as she was able. Running as if the buildings inside the gates were monsters ripping at her. He’d catch her wandering the scope of the back woods and roads without an apparent rhyme or reason, only pausing to acknowledge the presence of the mounts and no one else. Then, after a whisper to her horse, she’d vanish from sight for the night and where she went he could not tell you—but Maker knows it itched at the back of his mind, a festering voice whispering that nothing could come from a mage no one could see.

Especially one like _that_.

Cullen repressed that thought as fast as he could.

Experience had taught him once already that approaching the elf severely and trying to contain her was ill advised: a week into this whole endeavor, he had mistakenly presumed her drifting around was her planning an escape route through the woods and when he confronted her, she steadfastly ignored his order to turn back and tried to walk past him as if he was nothing. He should have known better than to grab a mage’s wrist as he did, but he was indignant and under the impression that she was playing some sort of game.

It was not his smartest moment. He could still recall the numb licks of electric current that coursed through his hand and into his bone before he felt the sharp pain—her toneless, husky voice saying “ _You are hurting me_ ” just as the shock darted through his entire body and he was blasted away from her and across the snow.

He was livid and if he had been a lesser man—the younger man still licking his wounds and drinking in the poison all those years ago—he might have killed her. But he seethed instead, staring at her scrawny form and the rebound magic still pulsing over her extended hands, readying to subdue her. He remembered she didn’t flinch when he glared at her; she didn’t do anything. She just stood there and stared at her magic with clouded eyes that reflected nothing in them. It was the first time he had ever gotten a clear view of them, what with her unruly chopped hair constantly covering her face, and what he saw—or perhaps _couldn’t_ see—twisted his organs into slimy knots.

Leliana had intervened after that; the simple call of the Herald’s name had gotten the elf to stand down and before either of them could think of confronting her, she ran off towards the lake. The spymaster brought him down just as quickly, her brilliant eyes stern while they peered into his blazing ones.

“Perhaps you should hold off from another lightshow, Commander. Pretty as it is, we can’t afford to lose that hand of yours.” She had told him with her lips curved in a rogue’s grin. Cullen, burning red with indignity, swallowed his retort and turned on his heel, letting everything die there.

Maker, and the _teasing_ from her after that. Leliana’s casual jabs during meetings and reports made her true intentions perfectly clear to him: stay away from the Herald for his own good as well as hers.

Cullen bustled under it, feeling much like when his mother would separate him and Branson after a wrestling match that went too far, but he dug in his heels and listened, nevertheless. If the Herald cared enough about the commentary, she didn’t show it. Her flitting appearances came with long, almost suffocating, silences and her focus elsewhere—sometimes Cullen even wondered if she heard anything that was being said—making very little remark on the advisor’s conversations unless necessary; she was fixated on her own business, coming for what she needed, taking it with maybe a grunt if they were lucky, and then slipping out before any of them could think to stop her.

She seemed especially intent on ignoring him.

It was the best remedy at the time, he knew; whatever happened between them, it had to end there. The Chantry had been devouring itself from the inside out and it would only enflame the infighting if they became aware that the Commander and the Herald had come to blows, especially so early on. His unprofessionalism in the face of her… _whatever_ she was would not happen again.

So, Cullen let her be when she walked about and disappeared now—and he told himself it is for the best, that he would not risk another confrontation with her, that he would trust the Herald as he was required and had promised, that if he must only speak with her, hastily, during briefings because her unpredictability made her a hazard, then he would do it.

That when she passed by and he saw a glimpse of her eyes for a brief moment, it didn’t make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Truly, it is for the best.

“Commander Rutherford.” Her voice broke out of his mind like splitting wood.

_‘Oh, for Andraste’s sake…’_

There was a dull ache throbbing between his eyebrows, one that had started early that evening and was now promising to excel into something far worse. Despite this, Cullen paused in his seventh turn around the troops and turned towards the elf standing inches higher than him on the small hill. “Herald.” He greeted with a slight tip of his head, but it got no response. She stared at the snow between his feet, blinking slowly as she shifted from right foot to left, and as the seconds crept, Cullen ccouldn’t help but flex his fingers around the hilt of his sword agitatedly.

“Was there something that you nee—“

“Why are you watching me?”

The question came so fast that Cullen has little time to prepare for it. “…I... Pardon?” He stuttered. The Herald slipped down from the hill with her head bent and he involuntarily stepped away from her when she came too close, as if she had something catching.

“Why are you watching me?” She repeated, and her unmarked hand went to the uneven strands of hair that brushed around her neck, twirling, squeezing, pulling at them. “I can see you look at me when I pass your way. It bothers me. I am right, yes? You _are_ watching me.”

 _‘Shit.’_ Is the first thing that came to his mind. Cullen swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “I…er…” It took him longer than it should to compose himself, caught off guard by how blunt her speech had been—or that she even approached him at all. “This is my post, Herald. I watch everyone who comes by here in case of oncoming attack. We have to be vigilant for anything even—even from inside our ranks. It is not the first time I’ve see that happen, but I will prevent it, I assure you.”

The Herald gripped her hair tighter and said, “You do not watch Cassandra when she comes here. Or Solas. Leliana. You do not watch them go.” She moved closer and jabbed a finger at his chest. This time, he refuses to be budged. “You are watching me and I do not like it. Stop.”

There was a flare of anger in him. “No. Herald. It is necessary for me to watch you.”

“Why?”

 _‘Because you’re unpredictable and I don’t trust unpredictable things_.’

“Because you’re still a prisoner despite that mark.” Cullen informed her harshly, glaring. Not that she saw it; the Herald instead tore her gaze from his chest to her marked hand. The green magic ignited. As if crushing a fly, she clenched her fist and, to Cullen’s surprise, the mark hissed in protest.

Maker, it acts as if it was alive.

Cullen watched as her lips twitched just for a second, her expression unreadable, but then she looked up at him and, for the first time, their eyes met. It’s fast; a flash of dazed violet that caught the air in his throat. He darted his eyes from her like he had seen something he shouldn’t. Something ancient and bottomless.

The elf didn’t seem to enjoy what she saw in his, either. She spun away, starting to head back to the trees, “Stop watching me.”

He should leave it there. Let her go, don’t pay attention to what she’s doing to him. He had work to do, after all. She’s a distraction.

“Where do you go?”

Andraste’s tits, he was a _fool_.

But the elf stopped abruptly and looked at him over her shoulder, her hand inching up to twist in her hair again. “…There.” She pointed towards the west, in the huddle of trees. “There is a cabin. I stay there.”

Cullen squinted at the woods. “Cabin? The former apothecary’s cabin, you mean? Why are you going there?”

The Herald shrugged her shoulders and stomped one of her heels. “The cabin Josephine gave me is too noisy. I do not like it. There are too many people wanting to talk. Voices on top of voices on top of voices. I do not like it.” She says, waving her hands repeatedly over the other to illustrate her point. “Do you understand?”

Surprisingly, Cullen finds he does. “Yes, I do.”

She nodded, turning her back to him again.

“The fighting does not…bother you?” He probed carefully.

She glanced at the troops, “That is sword against shield; metal on metal. It is different. It doesn’t echo and repeat like everyone’s voices does. _You_ know that too.”

“Do I?” He crossed his arms, “And how do you know that?”

“Because you stay here and not there. This comforts you; inside the gates does not. Fighting makes you feel natural. Safe…?” She questioned herself and then. “Yes. Safe.”

And she stated that so matter-of-factly, with such certainty, that Cullen almost found it impossible to argue against. The word ‘safe’ hit against the inside of his ribs and wrapped around his heart, squeezing painfully. He fidgeted uncomfortable, his fingers inching around to find the top of his sword, to feel the reassuring weight of it. “I don’t…” He began, but then another thought occurred to him. “Wait. Have you been watching me?”

“Yes.” Another fact—one as unquestionable as the scar blaring down above them—and then she added, “Because you’re unpredictable—and I don’t trust unpredictable things.”

This time he didn’t try to stop her when she ran off out of his reach. The Commander felt his legs, his _mouth_ , refuse to work, as if she had smacked him with an ice spell and frozen him down to the marrow of his bones. Befuddled and speechless, but more than this, he felt something else. Unnerved once again…and fascinated.

She _fascinated_ him.

Maker’s breath, he wasn’t sure he liked what she did to him.


End file.
